Broadband, bridges and solar panels

Stimulus money may be a dirty word to some, but government funding and incentives seem to be making a difference in Tulare County’s economy.

The Central Valley Next Generation Broadband Infrastructure project, a $66.6 million endeavor that is being partly funded through the U.S. Department of Agriculture, will create a 1,300-mile, high-capacity, fiber-based infrastructure throughout 18 counties in the Central Valley. In Tulare County, 200 miles of fiberoptic cable work began in January with a few corridors now nearing 90 percent completion.

Some schools could get service as soon as next month, says Mike Stewart, director of marketing for CVIN/VAST Networks. That includes rural, underserved areas in Alpaugh, Lindsay and Monson-Sultana — all low-income parts of the county.

Not only schools but libraries, hospitals, clinics, public safety facilities and area businesses will be able to take advantage of both new broadband capacity and new wireless service at their front door soon, says Stewart. The towns of Exeter and Porterville are pretty well wired.

Stewart says that working closely with Tulare County and local cities, “we were able to find ways to streamline the processes involved, reduce some of the costs associated with building this new infrastructure and, as a result, expand the network significantly within Tulare County to meet the needs of additional communities.”

The new network will help put rural areas on a more even plane with their urban counterparts, says Stewart, noting that almost half of the households in the Valley and hundreds of smaller towns have no broadband access and only 20 percent of all Valley residents have greater than a 10Mb/s connection. Also, a second project to bring wireless service to rural parts of Tulare County is under way at the same time.
With the new service, homes and businesses “can have affordable access to actual download speeds of at least 100 megabits per second and upload speeds of at least 50 megabits.”

As far as helping to attract more jobs to the area, Stewart notes “that the Central Valley has so much going for it including location, low labor costs and affordable land and now will be able to offer high fiberoptic network capacity to businesses who are considering locating here.”

Source:http://www.visaliatimesdelta.com/article/20120609/ROI/120609005/John-Lindt-Broadband-bridges-solar-panels?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|Frontpage|s